Legends review – Steve Coogan takes on Britain’s biggest drug gang | Television
Yomagine The A-Team however as a substitute of a band of wrongfully convicted US military commandos who grow to be troopers of fortune, it is a group of dissatisfied baggage searchers and VAT investigators who’ve taken their ties off. Are you bought? Good! Because Legends is a six-part thriller by Neil Forsyth primarily based on the true story of a gaggle of abnormal women and men recruited from the rank and file of Her Majesty’s Customs within the early 90s, given three weeks’ coaching and despatched undercover to infiltrate and convey down two large drug cartels that have been filling Britain’s streets with heroin and actually pissing Mrs Thatcher – head of the social gathering of regulation and order, do not – off.
Steve Coogan – probably in want of a spot of emotional reduction after a profession spent taking part in losers or Jimmy Savile-shaped villains – stars as former undercover police officer Don Clarke. He places the group collectively for the house secretary (Alex Jennings – that is statutory) and HMC’s director of investigations Angus Blake (Douglas Hodge) regardless of neither of them seeming to supply any cash or assist for the venture.
After a enjoyable, if barely foolish, trot by way of the recruitment course of – anybody who asks about additional time or the finer authorized particulars of what they’re being requested to do is summarily ejected and solely those that put within the further hours at lockpicking class can anticipate to make the grade – Don has discovered his folks and we will get into the meat of the factor.
Guy (performed by Tom Burkea advantageous actor who has chosen a Mogadon monotone and dragged-through-molasses vitality that turns into more and more irreconcilable with the character of Guy, as he rises by way of the gangster ranks by his wits and fists) is acknowledged by Don as a “lone wolf” operator. Don sends his protector to London with dire warnings to not let his “legend” – the faux identification issued to all recruits, which they must imagine in as wholeheartedly as attainable to guard themselves – and the darkness of his new life overtake him. Guy is to pose as an importer of medicine and uncover his approach into the huge operation run by Turkish overlords who’re hoping to broaden past the comparatively worthless quantities and income that may be introduced in by way of human mules. Off he trots, forsaking a daughter and intensely understanding spouse, Sophie (Charlotte Ritchie), who did a short investigatory stint herself again within the day and is aware of concerning the attract and dangers.
Two different recruits – hardbitten, hotheaded Essex native Kate (Hayley Squires), who has grow to be sick of monitoring down perverts and their unlawful stashes of pornography, and the extra considerate, tentative Bailey (Aml Ameen), equally bored with life searching down VAT evaders – are despatched to Liverpool to see what they will discover out concerning the drug gang controlling the streets there.
Last however not least is Erin (Jasmine Blackborow), backroom knowledge hound extraordinaire, sniffing out proof trails and serving to the legends keep half a step forward of the more and more threatening folks round them. Corrupt cops, last-minute patches to tales, tiny slip-ups, lacking door codes and gangland energy struggles preserve viewer nerves jangling properly.
It is a superb story – plucky underdogs risking life and limb for noble beliefs (a drug-free nation! The safety of impoverished, weak and harmless folks!) whereas baddies wait to pounce on errors – and the institution are braced to seize any credit score for themselves. You can see why Forsyth (greatest identified for The Gold which dramatized the Brink’s-Mat robbery) and its aftermath, which touches on some related state-of-the-nation themes) was drawn to it. He largely, if typically very, very narrowly avoids falling into the ever yawning entice {that a} story about customs officers turning into the A-Team inevitably faces, which is the potential for bathos, if not outright risibility. “You think a few customs officers can take on the biggest drug gang in Britain?” (because the Home Sec says to Blake) is a line that would simply come from a sitcom or a comedy sketch. “From tomorrow you’ll disappear. Tonight, say your goodbyes” needs to be in a high-octane motion thriller starring not less than a B-list American as one thing cool. Into the gulf between them, credulity dangers falling – particularly given the presence of Coogan, good although he’s. At the again of the viewer’s thoughts is at all times the suspicion that he’s about to unleash his comedian chops and alter all the things.
The vitality spent protecting issues severe prevents the sequence catching hearth. But it stays a superb story, right here effectively instructed.
